Kai’s eyes opened wide with a strange unease well before his alarm had a chance to wake him up. It could’ve been inflicted by his dreams, but the teen’s memories of his nighttime visions were already fading. Whatever it was, he felt fortunate for at least being able to trace it back to a source.

  “God damn, I almost got killed!”

  Last night, during his field trip with Kazuma. For the first time since he’d arrived at TOAL, Kai was truly reminded of his own mortality. It wasn’t an uncommon occurrence back home, but the amazing time the teen was having somehow made him forget all about it. And now that the terrible knowledge was once again front and center, he had to do something about it.

  To help him carry his things around, Kai was given a small, drawstring bag he could fit several textbooks into if he really pushed its limits. He thought to himself that he could repurpose it into a sort of bug out bag, filled with all sorts of supplies. Food, clothing, and most importantly, ammunition. If Kai got himself held at bowpoint again, he’d need something big to throw. And there weren’t always going to be boulders or chairs lying around for him to use.

  The teen started by stuffing the bag with several changes of clothes, resolving to fit in a couple of nonperishable meals when he went to get breakfast. Kai wondered if he could fit an entire breakfast burrito in there, he was really in the mood for one of those today. But judging by how there was half a sweater sticking out the top that just wouldn’t fit inside, the teen figured that maybe this bag wasn’t enough.

  “Hold on, what if I try this?” Kai whispered to himself as he took out the contents of the bag and placed it inside the drawer of an otherwise empty end table. “Fehu,” he whispered after inscribing the rune upon its surface, turning the entire piece of furniture into a small, silvery-white ball that fit inside his hand.

  “And there we go! Clothes packed!” he exclaimed, tossing the comparatively miniscule orb into his drawstring bag. “You know, I wonder if food will keep fresh like this?”

  Lacking any material to work his hypothesis on, Kai opted to get ready for the day. Besides, he’d be able to get himself a test subject at his first stop.

 

---

 

  Breakfast and class were unassuming compared to the events of the day before. And as expected, the teen learned something brand new, like the fact that the people here didn’t know what a breakfast burrito was.

  “Seriously! It’s eggs, sausage, and tater tots! What’s so hard to get?” exclaimed Kai.

  “Hey, I don’t make these, I just tell the chefs in the back what you want,” grunted the woman manning the counter. “It’s not my fault you ordered off the menu.”

  “I’m not mad at you, I’m just trying to figure out why the hell my burrito’s filled with corn flakes and maple syrup!”

  “Hey, is there a problem?” said one of the chefs as he came out the double doors leading to the kitchen.

  “Yeah, how do you guys not know what a breakfast burrito is?!” shouted Kai, over the din coming from the back.

  “Hey, custom orders aren’t easy, you know. Especially when they’re as vague as ‘breakfast burrito’.”

  “Come on, you’re telling me you’ve never heard of them before? It’s just eggs, sausage, and tater tots wrapped in a tortilla!”

  “No, I haven’t. But I’ll keep that in mind next time. Seriously, you shouldn’t expect everyone to know about your niche foods.”

  “Niche? Half of every diner in the US probably makes them!”

  “Damn, what kind of Earth did you come from?” chuckled the chef. “Next you’re going to tell me that you grew up watching ‘Transformers’ instead of Transmorphers.”

  “I… did,” slowly replied Kai.

  “Huh. Well, whatever,” shrugged the chef, turning around and heading back to the kitchen. “I guess I have that damn truck hitting me to thank for forcing me to deal with so many weirdos.”

  Kai stared ahead for several seconds, trying to process what just happened. He slowly turned back to the lady at the counter and sheepishly apologized for his outburst.

  “Don’t worry about it, kid. I’ve had to teach some of these ‘pros’ how to make our best selling dishes! So something as niche as a breakfast burrito is probably too much for them to wrap their heads around.”

 

---

 

  The next stop for Kai was the library. The night before, he came to a jarring conclusion and had some very pointed questions for the librarian. Now with the opportunity to get some answers, the teen marched into the cozy space right up to the man in charge, and unloaded exactly what had been on his mind.

 

---

 

  Kai sat down on one of the tables near the entrance, having gotten exactly what he’d come here for. Stacked in a neat pile was a collection of various anime and movies Kazuma had recommended to him several days ago. In the teen’s hand was a book on mythology. He figured he’d start watching through everything later in the day, since he didn’t have any particular plans on how he wanted to make use of his allotted free time.

  “Hiya, Kai!” came a familiar voice with a heavy Australian accent.

  “Oh, hey Sheila. What’s up?” asked the teen, setting down his book and looking behind him.

  “I was about to ask you the same thing! It looks like school’s going well, seeing as you’re catching up on your reading instead of watching TV. Gotta love that responsibility!”

  “Uh, yeah! It sure is something.”

  “And I-” the woman started before her phone began to ring. She looked towards the teen apologetically. “Sorry about that, Kai, I have to take this.”

  The teen watched her turn around and leave, but not before catching a very interesting line.

  “An update from Artyom, huh? Great! How goes his mission?”

  This was probably the first time Kai had heard anything about what his savior was up to, and like any curious teen, he didn’t want to just leave it there. Carefully pushing back his seat, the teen slowly rose to his feet and took several silent steps towards the exit, right on Sheila’s tail.

  “He what?!” she exclaimed in a whisper. “I know what he’s like, but he wouldn’t!”

  Well that sounded juicy, but not in the way Kai was expecting.

  “Why didn’t you say that first! Seriously Gus, you’re such a drama queen.”

  Kai frowned. He still had no idea what the two were talking about, but it didn’t seem as bad as it first sounded.

  “I guess I have to appreciate his dedication to the mission, but leaving the survivors of a burned down village to fend for themselves, even after giving them all the tools they’ll need to make it through, isn’t something I’d have the heart to do.”

  “He what?!” Kai screamed in his mind.

  “Yup, glad we have someone like that on our side,” continued Sheila. “Just hope he can find whatever’s going on there soon.” She hung up and continued down the hallway.

  Kai himself stood with his back to the wall, now beginning to slump, as he tried to process what he’d just heard. Artyom, abandoning the survivors of a village that got burned down? He wouldn’t do that! Would he? He saved the teen’s life! He was a goddamn hero!

  No, there was more to it. But Kai wasn’t ready to just accept the self-imposed explanation and continue on blissfully unaware of the truth. He was going to find out for himself.

  Walking up to the front counter, the teen regarded the head librarian with a steeled gaze and decided to ask him. “Hey, would Artyom ever do something like ditch a village that burned to the ground, even if he helped them out a little bit?”

  “My, that’s quite the overly-specific hypothetical,” replied the librarian uneasily, yet with a strange hint of relief in his voice. “But to answer your question as best as I professionally can, I do see Artyom as objectively moral, despite the fact that he has… priorities.”

  “Priorities? What does that mean?”

  “It would not do me well to talk poorly of a colleague,” the man sighed. “But you should be able to see for yourself in the executive council meeting notes we have compiled. They should be on the shelf just to your right.”

  After thanking the head librarian, Kai made his way to the shelf in question, and found himself a large, spiral-bound book after some careful searching. Opening the heavy tome, the teen began to skim through the notes on the last few months.

  “Let’s see here,” he whispered to himself, flipping through the pages. “Something about budgeting, putting more money into the runic research department, no.”

  Next page. “Personnel assignments? No wait, they’re just moving the construction workers around to work on different things. An indoor pool and water slide?! But that’s not it either.”

  10 more pages. “Offworld business planning? Nothing about taking advantage of the locals, maybe the librarian was exaggerating?”

  One more page. Kai’s fingers slipped and he dropped the book on the floor. He slowly knelt to pick it up, but didn’t lift himself back up after. “Motion to allow the use of TOAL resources to assist Worlds negatively affected by Earthers, and to forcibly remove Earthers from Worlds which they are actively harming.”

  The teen set down the pages as he felt a memory resurface in the back of his mind, but his eyes still focused on the words before him. “Sixth attempt to pass the motion, council has failed to reach unanimous consensus. 6 For, 1 Against. For: Khethiwe Gwamanda, Obadiah Clay, Iori Wako… the names continued. Against: Artyom Choi.”

  The sudden flash of pain was almost unbearable. Kai shut his eyes as a new memory of his first day at TOAL became available to him once more.

 

---

 

  Kai was back in the classroom, devoid of anyone else besides him, Ms. Neal, and the three soldiers.

  “The first is Fairytale World,” said the familiar voice of his teacher. “These worlds are pretty much out of a fairytale. Well, the watered-down ones that you’d find in childrens’ movies, at least. Not the original Brothers Grimm tales. Everyone is generally happy and kind hearted, not afraid to help a stranger in need. There’ll usually be some kind of Great Evil that threatens their cozy way of life that pops up once every few centuries, but they usually end up summoning someone from Earth to deal with it.”

  Kai nodded. “Does that always work out?”

  “For the Earther, pretty much always. Whatever big bad they have to face is usually no worse than a rabid dog with semi-competent bureaucrats.”

  “And the people who brought them over?” the teen asked carefully.

  “Pretty much the same for them. All of the rituals we’ve encountered so far seem to have some kind of built-in filter that only brings over the morally upstanding sort.”

  “So that’s why you all accepted me so quickly? I mean besides the fact you guys need more members.”

  “Hey, we’re not that desperate! Artyom probably just felt bad for you.”

  The teen glared at her, prompting a playful eye roll.

  “But don’t think that just because you’ve been let in so easily that our security is lacking.” She nodded her head towards the soldiers in the room. Now that Kai looked at them more closely, he could see that they had pocketed weapons, and one was sitting next to a big, red button on the wall.

  “Of course, there was the one time a Fairytale World had the misfortune of summoning someone horrible.” Hannah went silent for a second. The others in the room did as well. The air was heavy, but Hannah continued the story. “We don’t speak their name here, it’s best if their identity isn’t remembered, only their actions.”

  Hannah took a drink from the water bottle on her table and continued. “They were a monster, and treated that World as if it were a game and they were a Murderhobo. That’s a Tabletop RPG term, it means a player who just runs around, committing murder and worse out of convenience. Surprisingly, they ended up stopping the great evil they were brought to defeat in the first place.”

  “In that case, story over. How did you guys get involved?” asked Kai.

  “They took the villain’s place. They even managed to run the evil empire more efficiently, spreading greater calamities across that World. Because of that, the summoning ritual was used again, and this time a much better hero was brought over.”

  “Let me guess, it gets worse?” asked Kai.

  “Oh yeah Nostradamus, it does,” nodded Hannah. “This new hero didn’t even make it past the starting town. Apparently, they-who-must-not-be-named heard about him and had him assassinated.”

  “And this is where you all get involved?” asked Kai. “Or am I being too hopeful?”

  “You sure are!” Hannah exclaimed sarcastically. “Seeing their failure, they summoned another hero, this time in secret. Too bad they had eyes and ears everywhere and had this new hero assassinated as well. In one last desperate attempt, the ritual was invoked multiple times in quick succession, and each of the new summons was scattered to the winds in hopes that one of them would be able to gain power in secret and take down the new villain.”

  “This has to be where you guys noticed, right? Right?!”

  She finally nodded. “But by the time we realized what was going on, most of the new summons were captured. That piece of shit was angry that it wasn’t easy this time and took it out on those poor kids. One of them was a girl about as old as you are. When they found her in its tower, chained up and…” Hannah paused. She couldn’t continue.

  “Our agents killed that bastard on the spot,” concluded one of the soldiers. He had black hair in a buzzcut and a grating voice. “I’ve been told they were even in the middle of throwing a tantrum when the bullet went through their head.”

  The air was heavy with a pregnant silence. The clock on the wall ticked. It wasn’t audible until now.

  “But that was the one worst mission out of the hundreds, if not thousands, we’ve sent our troops on. Nothing we’ve encountered has ever been as bad as that,” said Hannah, finding her voice. “The girl was rescued and brought to another Fairytale world to live out a safe life. We even have one of our therapists go out to visit her every week!”

  Hannah paused again. “Obviously whatever life you’ve lived is hopefully leagues better than her’s, but it’s nice to know that we take care of each other here, even in the most extreme cases.”

  Kai looked down for a long while, before finally replying. “Yeah, that is pretty comforting.”

  “Also, there’s a bill being voted on in the executive council that should stop something like this from happening again!” Hannah exclaimed. “All about making sure that any World that summons Earthers are actually saved, and that the summoned heroes are kept accountable by us. It’ll take a good amount of manpower and resources, but almost everyone thinks it’s worth the cost!”

  “Too bad he keeps vetoing it,” interrupted the grizzled man who spoke up earlier. “Something as big as that isn’t gonna pass unless everyone on the council approves it, and that guy just doesn’t give a shit about non-Earthers.”

  “Who?” asked Kai.

  “You’ve already met him,” the soldier replied with a snarl. “Artyom.”